------------------------------------ Prologue ------------------------------------
I stood atop a bunch of clouds. Not kidding. Everywhere I looked, it was white and puffy. Streams of swirling mist shimmered in the air, 'As if the clouds were knit by the wind, a Temple for Aeolus himself', I thought. It is a mystery how some part of me can keep on taking the reality in and process it, rather well, while the rest of me jibes at the reality, constantly, and makes things messy. Certainly was a fine mess, this one. 'Alone in, umm.. a quiet theater built in white fluffs, fluffs which also fly in and out of on drafts of air through flutes and nebular windows within, yes, more clouds. Peaceful place.' Didn't ring any bells.
No sounds at all, I realized. No whoosh in the wind, far removed from buzzing machines, and further away from chattering men the buzzing machines, `live now` from their stone edifices, `always on` around their world. That is what silence is in a two-penny city hole.'
I couldn't even see how the spot was lit. Bright, like the clouds each had a sun in their belly somewhere, a thousand orbs bathing the scenery in translucent white. The clouds moved and the shadows danced. 'So full of life..' It was just, there. I was just 'there'. Like magic.
After a while, struck by rising panic, I stepped out of my reverie to find facts. Some real effort towards finding where 'this' was was expected of me. The last scene I could recall - solid bars. Hard metal, cylindrical, meant business. Great allies against, the 'no tresspassing' cabin was quite a blast. was a plain and simple house party. Far along on the march to morning. Few men down. That wasn't here anymore although the flighty alcohol rushed like a phoenix in my head. Not in the belly though. My body didn't feel intoxicated. However, I tried flexing an eyebrow. A quick test for motor function. Failed. As if my brain pulled at a huge whale floating in the vast ocean, barely responding to my will. No response. 'How had I even moved so far?'
The rising tension broke, thankfully, as a delicate note sounded in my ears. The audible twang hung in the air for a while. Then, it got fainter, yet still there. Then another. I turned to look behind me. No one. 'A distant sound positively.' One more. There. My squinted eyes settled on a golden snowflake sparkling on white. The light was playing games with me. I remember seeing a mirage, last fishing trip. Almost froze talking a selfie. This wasn't the same, though.'
Two more, played at a small gap. And eerily quiet again.
For lack of a better plan, I started walking towards it. 'Going peculiarly well', I felt. I had been on a streak lately. At the party, no one had talked about the stupid president. Good people. Learnt seven words for a butterfly and a number. "We so delightedly speak if only we could listen so too." she had said, "So many voices out there, wanting to be heard, waiting to be loved, always afraid if another will drown it, corrupt it." Today, I found out I had the key and the lock, both.
The lock - Emote, a machine intelligence that understands and simulates human emotion. As human and more. The key - frames. Just a drunk remark from a lovely stranger and suddenly your billion dollar venture is no longer a pipe-dream. The plan was to break back, make it big, sell out, kiss goodbye. I looked around. Pit-stop?
Even here, even now, habitual fear of the unknown hadn't overwhelmed me. A trail of sparkling tears marked my path as I trode on. Fragile psyche is such a pain sometimes. Needs to be appeased. Clouds helped. Gradually the wind eased, not pushing my face-in anymore. It came in waves. I went straight. Apparently drifted to left some. A harp stood slightly shy of one-o-clock, a mile away maybe, maybe a hundred meters, hard to tell. No, two harps.
Thinking too much is a disastrous habit. I talk from experience. My mind divides into sub-processes that then think their own share of thoughts. True story. A part of me, the Goalkeeper, was debating whether to check 'lucid dreaming' off the bucket list. This assumption may be found debatable since I had no control over the lucidity. 'Totally a dream though', I thought. Sometimes, a state of mind recurs often enough to make a name for itself, an identified part of the whole. Quite like frames.' I hope to write a book on this too, someday. Plenty parts of my own. The Critique, for example, was having a ball - everything was open to debate. And the Tourist repeatedly regretted not having a camera, then justified it since the landscape was so decorously monotonous. 'It would be overexposed.'
'What, if not a dream? What if my mind's pleasure circuits had rusted from disuse and got fried from an overdose of Dopamine?' I thought. 'Then this is heaven?' the Optimist ventured. The color scheme and firelessness were definitely a plus. Cuddly softness makes it so hard to critically judge a place. 'Am I dead?... That's it? Lorem ipsum dolor...'
Meanwhile, as I carried on mentating, deeply routed survival skill struck the proverbial ground with full force and started to crawl through the shadows. Proverbial, because I had just realized that mists surrounded me, blocking any direct view of the clouds below me. I hadn't seen the ground at all. It felt like paddling through mud with your hands and knees. Atleast no grit in my mouth and nothing bit me on the eyelid either.
I had traveled a few blocks. Didn't even break a sweat. There was sweat alright, my forehead was drenched, I believe, only got my word for it. Perspiration was internal. As I walked towards the golden anomaly, the panic at being dead kept beating at the edge of my awareness. Beating hard, like drumming with baseball bats. Luckily, I get distracted easily too. 'This place is like the set for 70s feel-good commercials. Heavenly Loops or some other breakfast cereal. Even the angels look bored.' I thought. The lack of catchy jingles did bother me a lot just then. Life should have a background music. Distracting me isn't difficult at all, even I can do it.
'Angels?', I thought. Looking around, it took about a quarter turn back towards the harps. 'Harps?', I thought again. Rather confusing. The rest of the infinitesimally changed scenery also registered, each cloud overriding the spot of an older cloud in my blurry vision. I focused on the harps. Apparently, the endless white vista was marked only by two jumbo-size golden Harpischords flying around with little wings of their own. Behind them floated the angels, two of them, hardly even visible. My own doubts on my sanity aside, no facks were given. Angels obviously, wings, white, human figure, aura, etc. I still couldn't see any features on the angels, but their eyes, there somewhere in the canopy of fog, were focused right below their floating feet. I kept looking there as I walked, didn't see much until the semiconscious trudge had brought me far enough to see the sky blue strip glint through the edges of what was a hole in the clouds. Must be an edge. 'A hole in the clouds?' The stupid spacial connection of cloud with sky playing with my head again. 'So annoying', I thought.
The gravity hit me then. I realized I couldn't be standing on clouds, in the sky. Silly idea. Yet, I wasn't falling. These were definitely clouds. I couldn't see land so I had just assumed it. The angels were floating. But they had huge wings. The facking harps also had wings. 'They are still far and we can't risk the cumulonimbus floor's fancy of a trip over to Africa, a one-way ticket to Kilimanjaro.' said the Joker. 'Seriously? Not the time.' I thought and croaked "****, please save me, aghhh...", or something along those lines. I wasn't shouting. At all. Nuh uh. And I quickened the pace only so slightly. '... And angels?' They were peering at me now. Close enough, harmless enough. In the end, I'm glad Survivor won over the rest of useless me. They were even pretty.
-------
... wait for it ...
I stood atop a bunch of clouds. Not kidding. Everywhere I looked, it was white and puffy. Streams of swirling mist shimmered in the air, 'As if the clouds were knit by the wind, a Temple for Aeolus himself', I thought. It is a mystery how some part of me can keep on taking the reality in and process it, rather well, while the rest of me jibes at the reality, constantly, and makes things messy. Certainly was a fine mess, this one. 'Alone in, umm.. a quiet theater built in white fluffs, fluffs which also fly in and out of on drafts of air through flutes and nebular windows within, yes, more clouds. Peaceful place.' Didn't ring any bells.
No sounds at all, I realized. No whoosh in the wind, far removed from buzzing machines, and further away from chattering men the buzzing machines, `live now` from their stone edifices, `always on` around their world. That is what silence is in a two-penny city hole.'
I couldn't even see how the spot was lit. Bright, like the clouds each had a sun in their belly somewhere, a thousand orbs bathing the scenery in translucent white. The clouds moved and the shadows danced. 'So full of life..' It was just, there. I was just 'there'. Like magic.
After a while, struck by rising panic, I stepped out of my reverie to find facts. Some real effort towards finding where 'this' was was expected of me. The last scene I could recall - solid bars. Hard metal, cylindrical, meant business. Great allies against, the 'no tresspassing' cabin was quite a blast. was a plain and simple house party. Far along on the march to morning. Few men down. That wasn't here anymore although the flighty alcohol rushed like a phoenix in my head. Not in the belly though. My body didn't feel intoxicated. However, I tried flexing an eyebrow. A quick test for motor function. Failed. As if my brain pulled at a huge whale floating in the vast ocean, barely responding to my will. No response. 'How had I even moved so far?'
The rising tension broke, thankfully, as a delicate note sounded in my ears. The audible twang hung in the air for a while. Then, it got fainter, yet still there. Then another. I turned to look behind me. No one. 'A distant sound positively.' One more. There. My squinted eyes settled on a golden snowflake sparkling on white. The light was playing games with me. I remember seeing a mirage, last fishing trip. Almost froze talking a selfie. This wasn't the same, though.'
Two more, played at a small gap. And eerily quiet again.
For lack of a better plan, I started walking towards it. 'Going peculiarly well', I felt. I had been on a streak lately. At the party, no one had talked about the stupid president. Good people. Learnt seven words for a butterfly and a number. "We so delightedly speak if only we could listen so too." she had said, "So many voices out there, wanting to be heard, waiting to be loved, always afraid if another will drown it, corrupt it." Today, I found out I had the key and the lock, both.
The lock - Emote, a machine intelligence that understands and simulates human emotion. As human and more. The key - frames. Just a drunk remark from a lovely stranger and suddenly your billion dollar venture is no longer a pipe-dream. The plan was to break back, make it big, sell out, kiss goodbye. I looked around. Pit-stop?
Even here, even now, habitual fear of the unknown hadn't overwhelmed me. A trail of sparkling tears marked my path as I trode on. Fragile psyche is such a pain sometimes. Needs to be appeased. Clouds helped. Gradually the wind eased, not pushing my face-in anymore. It came in waves. I went straight. Apparently drifted to left some. A harp stood slightly shy of one-o-clock, a mile away maybe, maybe a hundred meters, hard to tell. No, two harps.
Thinking too much is a disastrous habit. I talk from experience. My mind divides into sub-processes that then think their own share of thoughts. True story. A part of me, the Goalkeeper, was debating whether to check 'lucid dreaming' off the bucket list. This assumption may be found debatable since I had no control over the lucidity. 'Totally a dream though', I thought. Sometimes, a state of mind recurs often enough to make a name for itself, an identified part of the whole. Quite like frames.' I hope to write a book on this too, someday. Plenty parts of my own. The Critique, for example, was having a ball - everything was open to debate. And the Tourist repeatedly regretted not having a camera, then justified it since the landscape was so decorously monotonous. 'It would be overexposed.'
'What, if not a dream? What if my mind's pleasure circuits had rusted from disuse and got fried from an overdose of Dopamine?' I thought. 'Then this is heaven?' the Optimist ventured. The color scheme and firelessness were definitely a plus. Cuddly softness makes it so hard to critically judge a place. 'Am I dead?... That's it? Lorem ipsum dolor...'
Meanwhile, as I carried on mentating, deeply routed survival skill struck the proverbial ground with full force and started to crawl through the shadows. Proverbial, because I had just realized that mists surrounded me, blocking any direct view of the clouds below me. I hadn't seen the ground at all. It felt like paddling through mud with your hands and knees. Atleast no grit in my mouth and nothing bit me on the eyelid either.
I had traveled a few blocks. Didn't even break a sweat. There was sweat alright, my forehead was drenched, I believe, only got my word for it. Perspiration was internal. As I walked towards the golden anomaly, the panic at being dead kept beating at the edge of my awareness. Beating hard, like drumming with baseball bats. Luckily, I get distracted easily too. 'This place is like the set for 70s feel-good commercials. Heavenly Loops or some other breakfast cereal. Even the angels look bored.' I thought. The lack of catchy jingles did bother me a lot just then. Life should have a background music. Distracting me isn't difficult at all, even I can do it.
'Angels?', I thought. Looking around, it took about a quarter turn back towards the harps. 'Harps?', I thought again. Rather confusing. The rest of the infinitesimally changed scenery also registered, each cloud overriding the spot of an older cloud in my blurry vision. I focused on the harps. Apparently, the endless white vista was marked only by two jumbo-size golden Harpischords flying around with little wings of their own. Behind them floated the angels, two of them, hardly even visible. My own doubts on my sanity aside, no facks were given. Angels obviously, wings, white, human figure, aura, etc. I still couldn't see any features on the angels, but their eyes, there somewhere in the canopy of fog, were focused right below their floating feet. I kept looking there as I walked, didn't see much until the semiconscious trudge had brought me far enough to see the sky blue strip glint through the edges of what was a hole in the clouds. Must be an edge. 'A hole in the clouds?' The stupid spacial connection of cloud with sky playing with my head again. 'So annoying', I thought.
The gravity hit me then. I realized I couldn't be standing on clouds, in the sky. Silly idea. Yet, I wasn't falling. These were definitely clouds. I couldn't see land so I had just assumed it. The angels were floating. But they had huge wings. The facking harps also had wings. 'They are still far and we can't risk the cumulonimbus floor's fancy of a trip over to Africa, a one-way ticket to Kilimanjaro.' said the Joker. 'Seriously? Not the time.' I thought and croaked "****, please save me, aghhh...", or something along those lines. I wasn't shouting. At all. Nuh uh. And I quickened the pace only so slightly. '... And angels?' They were peering at me now. Close enough, harmless enough. In the end, I'm glad Survivor won over the rest of useless me. They were even pretty.
-------
... wait for it ...
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